. >> does your reporting suggest that harry reid has in fact explicitly rejected as a senate leader, a request by the republicans to add more flexibility to the cuts? >> well, we don't know that in particular, but what we do know is that the white house, they had an official down in front of the senate he recently and they were asked about giving this, being given this flexibility provision and they ultimately came back and said, we would reject any efforts to actually lessen the pain of this sequester. and so, the president here is getting himself into a situation where he's warning about all of these doom and gloom. the republicans are giving him a way out of this and they're increasingly looking to be rejecting that just so that they can continue to bring down the hammer. >> and the president, dan, is insisting not just on other spending cuts, alternatives, or even weakening the cuts, he's saying, look, i want a tax increase, too. >> what is that all about? i mean, we just had a huge tax increase, that is already, according to the newspaper reports, hurting consumer spending. why